GMVS breaths skiing!

01-12-2020
portable ski simulator gmvs

GMVS’s Portable Ski Machine by Alpine Engineering

GMVS’s Portable Ski Machine! Green Mountain valley school used our portable ski slope during autumn 2020 to prepare for the upcoming ski season. Covid-19 restricted them visiting the usual ski resorts like:

Kelly Brush Race Arena At Sugarbush Resort

  • With the new GS trail, nicknamed ‘The Connector,’ there is simply no better alpine training venue than Inverness and Brambles, especially as an environment for a constraints-led approach to learning ski skills.GMVS-skiclub-skiing-skimachine-alpineengineering

Middlebury College Snowbowl

  • The Snowbowl provides them with a world-class GS and slalom training venue located just 30-minutes away allows GMVS athletes to train alongside some of the best collegiate skiers in the country while also gaining variety and specificity of training.

Partner resorts Around The World

  • Fonna Glacier in Norway, Valle Nevado in Chile, and Copper Mountain and Loveland in Colorado play host to GMVS athletes throughout the year during our comprehensive year-round on-snow training camps.

So GMVS’s Portable Ski Machine, built on wheels and foldable was the ultimate training ground for the months Oct-Dec. Of course, space was limited but the training possibilities were endless. After the GMVS athletes adjusted themselves to skiing on artificial dryslope grass they embraced our smallest ski machine with open arms and discovered a new way of training. With a coach close by and an endless run in front, they had the chance to perfect on technique but also to build up stamina. Specific drills helped them to take away their weaknesses and perform even better in the snow.

Besides Alpine Skiing, GMVS’s Portable Ski Machine is also perfect for cross country skiing as it rotates reverse and has an angle between 3-17 degrees which can be adjusted while on the slope, just as the speed can be adjusted. As we mentioned the possibilities are endless! And even bigger on a treadmill SkiMachine!

Steve Utter
Alpine Program Director
”The slope is working very well for us. Kids are breaking in new boots, improving their ski-specific fitness, and of course, bettering their technique. All around, the ski slope is a fantastic addition to our programming.”

The history and mission of Green Mountain Valley School

Built upon Olympic dreams and enduring values, GMVS sprang to life with eleven winter-term students in 1973. The original “Mad Acad” (as students called it) — the brainchild of four young men with a passion for skiing and life itself — was built on the founders’ belief that they could provide a quality academic experience for competitive skiers in a safe, supportive, and responsibly supervised home away from home. From the very beginning, GMVS became an “all hands on deck” kind of place.

From its humble start in Al and Jane Hobart’s house on Bragg Hill, a nearby chalet, and scattershot on-snow training, GMVS moved first to the Shultz’s barn in Moretown, and finally to its current location on the Brothers’ farm. With a farmhouse and some land to use as the main facilities, all that was needed for a school were a few more buildings and the spirited people to make it happen. In keeping with the GMVS ethos of shared effort and shared purpose, everybody pitched in, and the current iteration of the GMVS campus was born.

Since then, GMVS has been transformed. The campus and facilities have expanded and been modernized, the student body has grown, the staff has become more specialized, and the program offerings have broadened – yet the GMVS mission and vision remains the same today as it was in 1973.

Through the unique sport of ski racing and through education in the liberal arts tradition, it is their mission to develop the whole person with a life-long love of learning, sport, and adventure. Their goal is to create an environment in which our students can become well-rounded scholars, athletes, and citizens who value: discipline, responsibility, respect, independent initiative, as well as total commitment and effort.

The GMVS ski club

The GMVS Ski Club provides young racers the opportunity to realize their potential while learning the fundamentals of an exciting sport they can enjoy for the rest of their lives. Athletes are exposed to the positive aspects of competition, the value of setting and pursuing goals, and the benefits of hard work.

SkiMachine-indoorskiing-GMVS-alpineprogram

All programs provide age-appropriate programming focused on skill development and race techniques. They teach FUNdamentals in an energetic environment that takes advantage of the world-class terrain at Sugarbush Resort and includes a healthy combination of free-skiing and gate training.

Racing is an essential component of all GMVS Ski Club programs. All athletes will be encouraged to participate in Vermont’s Northern Vermont Council (NVC) or other races as appropriate. NVC races may be hosted by any of the seven mountains that make up VARA’s Northern Vermont Council: Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Cochran’s, Stowe, Burke, Jay Peak and Smugglers Notch.

The GMVS Alpine Program

The GMVS Alpine program , a program to create champions, is part of the most successful program in the United States. For over 45 years, GMVS has developed Olympians, NCAA Champions, and USCSA powerhouses. Whether you dream of starting in the World Cup openers at Solden, jumping off the Mausefalle at the Hahnenkamm, or standing atop the podium at U16 Nationals, GMVS opens the door to infinite possibilities. Their world-renowned coaches will be able to identify your technical and tactical weaknesses and give you personalized corrective cues. At GMVS, they emphasize a holistic approach and recognize a key contributor to an athlete’s success is the environment they’re training in. The coaches will tailor your training and race plan to your abilities, experience, and goals – whatever they may be.

It´s a Progressive, Individualized Approach

GMVS provides the framework across all domains: conditioning, off-season ski training, in-season ski training, equipment preparation, physical and mental education, and race season athlete management for their athletes to achieve their goals. In recognition of multiple individual entry points into their system, we match the workload and content of athletes’ programs to their gender, age, and athletic milestones athletes hit along the way.

The approach is progressive, leans toward a heavy volume of on-snow ski training to habituate technical and tactical skill-building, values athleticism as the most significant form of conditioning, and places accountability for behavior and effort on the athlete.

Conditioning is geared toward developing athleticism, emphasizes proper movement patterns, and respects biological age. Year-round on-snow training emphasizes high volume and quality skill-building in concert with appropriate race season management. Physical education programming teaches students basic physiology, nutrition, and mental training skills.

This resulted in a list of rising stars!

  • Tim Gavett – 16 – Middlebury College
  • Jimmy Krupka – 16 – USST B-team
  • Declan McCormick – 17 – the Canadian development team
  • Ali Nullmeyer – 16 – Canadian World cup team
  • Charlie Raposo – 14 – British Alpine team and Europa cup squad
  • Ben Ritchie – 19 – USST B-team
  • Thomas Walsh – 13 – US Paralympics Alpine Skiing National team

Alpine Engineering SkiMachine at GMVS

We are proud to work with a high-class training center like GMVS and of course, asked them for feedback. We are pleased to hear our Portable Ski Machine at GMVS worked out well. After their athletes made the transition from snow to our artificial dryslope ski grass they had the possibility to improve on their ski-specific fitness and of course better their technique!

Tim Harris
Assistant Head of the school
”We had a great experience with the slope!”

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